Cats Eye Nebula

Here's my first attempt at a deep Sky object. "Seeing" was very poor. I had difficulty finding it with the 3X Barlow, so took it without. The Cats eye is probably not the best object to start with for a beginner, but I'm encouraged by the result while everything was against me.
Taken with the LX90 and DSI. 5 darks and 37 images stacked in Autostar Suite. Date April 19th 2005 Time 00:22 hrs.
www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...eye%20nebula%202.jpg
Bill H.

I think you've cracked it...

Dave McD

That's interesting Bill. Certainly not the easiest target to start with but the result is quite impressive. What sort of exposures did you use for the shot?

good job Bill,
looks like the tracking works well, can you give details on exposures etc.
There is definitely texture detail in the nebula, you certainly picked a not so easy target to start off on.

Hi Michael, I'm still experimenting with the DSI so tending towards hitting auto-this and auto-that until I get the way of it. It registered 1.000 on the auto-expose, I tried changing the the exposure manually but couldn't really get it any better. The image on the laptop was completely greyed out due to the brightness of the sky and caused difficulty getting things on the monitor until I took some darks. maybe once te moon starts to go, I shall try again and get a better sized image with the Barlow.
certainly not an award quality image, but quite impressive for a numbskull :lol:
Bill H.

good job Bill,
looks like the tracking works well, can you give details on exposures etc.

Dave, I have to say I was rather impressed with the tracking. It just sat rock solid in the screen, I actually thought at one point that the software had froze on me it was so steady, I moved the scope back and forward a bit to make sure the software was working. After about 10 mins and the scope began to dew up, it then started to drift slightly. I'm not sure, with the DSI how you describe the exposure, I could with an SLR, but on the DSI it was set at 1.000, I would hazard a guess at this being 1 second (?). Seeing was so poor that the DSI would only stack 37 images of 30% quality or more, but I saved all the raws and there were about 130.
Bill h.